Am I Eligible for a Life Settlement?
Eligibility?
In order to assess whether you are eligible for a life settlement, our experience suggests the insured should be 65 years of age or older and have some medical impairments. Additionally the insurance company that issued the policy is “A” rated or better and the policy death benefit is $250,000 or greater.
Qualification factors of a life settlement:
Age of the Insured
Health of the Insured
Type of Insurance Policy
Life Insurance Policy Premium
Life Insurance Policy Death Benefit (a.k.a. Size of Policy)
Insurance Company Rating
Details about the qualification factors of a life settlement:
Age of the Insured
Seniors over the age of 65.
Those under the age of 65 may qualify depending on medical condition.
Typically, investors are interested in life insurance policies of individuals who are older.
Health of the Insured
Medical records will be requested and kept confidential.
Generally, Institutional Funds prefer to have medical records that support a life expectancy of 8-12 years.
Type of Insurance Policy
Any type of insurance policies (ex: universal life, whole life, term life, group life) can be assessed.
If the policy is a Term policy, it must be able to be converted or changed into a permanent policy.
Life Insurance Policy Premium
Generally, institutional buyers prefer to see a premium to death benefit ratio of 6% or less.
Life Insurance Policy Death Benefit
The policy should have a face value of at least $250,000 to attract more attention from the Institutional Market.
Insurance Company Rating
Institutional buyers prefer to purchase policies used by “A” rated insurance companies.
Why would anybody want to have a Certified Policy Analysis?
We generally see four primary reasons a sale should be considered:
Outgrown need
You’ve outgrown your need for the policy.
You most likely purchased insurance when motivated by the desire to provide financial security for someone in the event of your death.
Today, because your savings are sufficient, or the family members you wanted to protect are grown and independent, you realize the protection is no longer needed.
Underperformance
Your life insurance policy hasn’t performed as expected or projected.
Many policies sold over the past 30 years used non-guaranteed assumptions to project future policy values.
Economic conditions have surely caused insurers to reduce the earnings of the typical policy.
These same conditions may have an impact on your ability to meet the premium required to maintain the coverage on a go-forward basis.
Change of Plans
Estate tax and business continuation plans have changed.
Life insurance is an integral component to most estate and business succession plans.
The current estate exemption of $5+ million places less emphasis on maintaining estate liquidity insurance. Business owners and executives typically maintain insurance on their lives to protect the business.
When the business is sold or the executive leaves his/her employer, the ability to convert the insurance to cash becomes extremely valuable.
Compliance
We consider "Compliance" to include three key elements. First, maintain proper licensing as a Life Settlement Broker. Second, to fully disclose to a client the options they have to keep some or all of the respective policy. Third, to compare the keep options to the market value of the policy via its sale to institutional buyer.